Queensland CCC: Make a Full Investigation of Townsville City Council /ADANI Relationship

The Townsville City Council is using $Au18.5M ratepayer funds to support Adani Enterprises in building a remote airstrip to support that company’s proposed Carmichael coal mine. The decision has been made almost wholly in secret with almost no consultation of the Citizens that fund the council's workings.

$18.5M is more than $100 for every Citizen - woman, man and child - governed by the Townsville City Council. It is a substantial fraction of a whole year's council income. Such secrecy around the deployment of such a substantial amount of Citizen wealth is therefore highly irregular. One must therefore conclude it to be plausible that the decision is at least in part driven by unseen benefits for undisclosed parties. Given the council's unwillingness to give Citizens due account of the use of Their wealth, and in the absence of other obvious drivers of the decision, one must conclude this plausibility simply by a logical process of deductive elimination.

We the undersigned therefore call on the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission to undertake a full investigation of the relationship between the Townsville City Council and ADANI. We call on the Commission to investigate both elected officers, represented by the Mayor Cr. Jenny Hill and nonelected executives represented by the CEO, Ms Adele Young. In the absence of a full and frank declaration of processes and proceedings by the council itself, we the undersigned seek verification of the council's probity by the Commission to restore our full confidence in the probity of Local Governments of this Land and their answerability foremost to Citizens.